


down this broken line

by rikacain



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Syndicate!Ethan AU, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 18:36:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6206056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikacain/pseuds/rikacain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this line of work, agents get killed and captured.</p>
<p>It's just a matter of which happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	down this broken line

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there. So this is like a Syndicate AU I was working on, and then I got distracted by other fandoms. But have it anyway, because I can never pass up Benji whump. :3

Benji wakes.

The room swims into focus, a drab grey concrete cube devoid of any feature, save for a long metal table gleaming dully under the single fluorescent light and two figures murmuring to each other in the shadows. He feels a terrible ache in the stretch of his shoulders, and an attempt to alleviate the pain reveals that his hands are chained high above his head, his feet barely touching the floor. If he tries, he could scrape the ground with his toe, but there wasn't much use in that, was there.

_Think_ , Benji tells himself. Where was he before this? He remembers the mission - his team was to intercept the parcel containing the latest nerve agents that Florent was passing to Thancharoen, and bring it back to American soil for neutralisation. Will had been telling him to get out before the building blew, shouting into his comm, and Benji had complied, packing up and running for the exits, and then, and then -

A sharp pain in his neck. Then nothing.

He wonders - no, he hopes to hell Devesh and Satou made it out safely. Then maybe Will would order them to find him, and he'd be out of here in a day. He just had to hold out.

Or if he were Ethan -

No. No, Ethan was declared missing and disavowed two years ago. Thinking about him wouldn't help one bit.

One of the figures steps towards the table, laying out a mechanic box's worth of equipment in precise motions. Benji has the feeling that they aren't meant for fixing up a car.

He tugs again at the chains around his wrists and they rattle futilely against the cool metal pillar he's held to. Neither figure pays any attention to him, the first still laying out a sizeable hammer and wrench, slow and precise. Under the harsh glare of the fluorescent light, he can see that it's a woman, her countenance set in neutral disaffection.

"Why am I here," Benji asks, except it comes out as a shaky rasp, not a demand.

Neither of them answer. The woman finally turns to him, her hands flexing and empty, but nevertheless just as ominous.

"What do you want," Benji utters before a fist drives home into his stomach.

* * *

It's been more than a day, perhaps even a week. He's lost track of time.

His captors do not talk to him, only to each other, their voices too soft no matter how hard he strains to hear. They don't want information from him, and for all his briefly conscious moments he cannot figure what else they could want. His tormentor is always the woman, her face bored as if she was simply doing the month's accounting, save that the numbers she was crunching was the blows she dealt to the balancing sheet that was Benji's body. The other figure stays in the shadow, always observing.

(There is only once that she is irritated enough to raise her voice.

"You make me do all your dirty work," she says, stalking across the floor towards Benji. Benji curls instinctively into himself, his body forgetting for a moment that gravity is the real jailor of his physical form, and she stops in front of him. He stares wide-eyed, barely conscious in a haze of pain, as she drags a finger across his blood-matted hair.

He thinks this is the most human he has ever seen her, and is almost grateful for the reminder.

The moment is gone when she slams a wrench into his knee.)

He barely sleeps, more often than not kept awake by the pain and the occasional cold bucket of water splashed into his face. He's not given anything to eat, save for the gruel the woman stuffs down his throat as part of her torture repertoire. His mouth tastes of copper and sand, and his shoulders scream at the slightest movement.

Maybe he's cursed his tormentor out with sarcasm and jibes, but maybe he's become silent after speaking becomes more painful than it's worth. _Will will find me_ , he tells himself whenever he finds a moment's reprieve. _He - he'll analyse where I could have gone, do his analyst thing -_

_Agent Dunn has been disavowed_ , a small voice recites in the back of his head.

It sounds like uncannily like Will's.

* * *

He knows he's gone down the deep end when he starts seeing Ethan.

Ethan looks almost the same from when he last saw him two years ago, tousled hair and blue eyes. Benji takes one look at him and starts convulsing, dry sobs or heaves of laughter wracking his body, because Ethan in front of him means he's either desperate enough to imagine someone dead or dead enough to see ghosts.

"Benji," Ethan says, too tender for even Benji's own imagination. The apparition cards a hand through Benji's hair, grimy with oil and blood. "Benji. Look at me."

He doesn't reply, refuses to reply to something too good to be true, and sobs out relief when the woman returns and the ghost is banished away.

It becomes something somewhat regular, Ethan visiting him when the woman is gone. Benji tries to ignore him, tries to tell himself that there's no point talking to ghosts. He tries to believe that he's still alive.

If he was dead it wouldn't be so damned painful, so there was that anyway.

"Benji," Ethan says, and it almost sounds like a plea.

"Call for me and I will help you," the apparition says, and Benji hates himself a little more for believing in a figment of his imagination.

* * *

The last straw comes when the woman goes for his hand.

He's never noticed before, seeing as how there were other painful spots to be precoccupied with; but when the woman reaches up to his unharmed right hand and grasps it, he suddenly panics.

His hands are the only things that made him useful. He needs them to modify equipment, to type commands and to hack into servers and if he loses them he'll be truly useless, and -

( _Call for me and I will help you_.)

"Ethan," he tries to shout but all his voice can manage is a desperate whisper, grasping at straws he's not sure are even there. "Ethan, please, help -"

And suddenly Ethan is there, and Ethan is unlocking the chains from around his wrists and the woman is gone and Benji falls sobbing into the warmth that is Ethan's body, thinking _it's over, it's over_ , and he doesn't even care if he's dead or alive, just that it's _over_.

"Benji," Ethan says, his voice calm and soothing. Benji clutches at the fabric of Ethan's shirt, Ethan who is very much alive and breathing and _why is he here_ , in Benji's personal hellhole, _why_? "Benji, you're safe, I found you, I didn't know you were here, you're safe."

_Ethan_ , Benji wants to say, _Ethan where have you been for two years, Will and Jane and I mourned you_ , but hours or days or weeks of torture has left him less than functional and he passes out.

* * *

Benji wakes.

His shoulders are screaming bloody murder but he's lying face-up and horizontal on an actual bed. He stares at the ceiling, counting his breath and waiting for the cold water to drench his waking way back into the concrete room, but as minutes pass, he lets himself dare to believe.

_Ethan_ , he thinks and maybe whispers aloud, but no one appears, not even his own personal hallucination. He wonders briefly if Ethan had been but a dream, before sleep pulls him back under.

He wakes again much later and this time Ethan is there at his side, talking to someone outside of his view. Benji struggles to sit up and Ethan switches his attention to him immediately, waving whomever he was speaking with away.

"Benji," he says. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," Benji croaks, and Ethan huffs, a smile tugging the corner of his lips upwards. "You're alive."

"I am," Ethan soothes, running a warm hand through Benji's much cleaner hair. Someone's bathed and patched him up, it seems. He doesn't know whether to hope it was Ethan. "I couldn't tell you, it would have blown my cover."

"So you were on a mission all along," Benji exhales in relief - Will probably knows about it and never told Benji. Classified information, his sodding foot, he was going to strangle the man when he sees him.

Ethan blinks, startled, before leaning in. "Still on a mission," he says, his voice lowered. "Benji, I've infiltrated the Syndicate."


End file.
